Month: August 2025

The message I posted previously was sent to the person I believe to be the scammer at the legitimate company I believe he works at and the replies I received seemed to indicate to me that he’s confident that he’s got away with it. So I’ve not replied and that may have rattled him a bit.

The email address of the fraudulent company with which I’ve been corresponding has, not surprisingly, now gone completely dead but I came across another account to which I sent a message a day or so ago and left it at that.

I don’t think the scammer realises how clear a trail he has left and in the meantime I’ve put together a detailed document detailing the string of emails and events involved in the fraudulent transaction and the identity of the person responsible for the fraud. That document is now complete and my intention is to send copies to the legitimate company he works for and its legal representative, Alibaba and Aliexpress and the minister responsible for trade in the Chinese embassy in London.

But this morning I received a reply to the email I sent to the ‘other’ email address mentioned above. This may also have come from the scammer, I don’t know, who may be rattled because I left clues in the messages I sent to what I believe to be his legitimate employer indicating that I know his identity.

The emails I have since received imply that they are from a colleague of the person with whom I was originally dealing and that the latter has resigned from the company. They said that nobody has yet looked at his sales records and they would see if they could and come back to me. I said make it quick because wheels are in motion.

So what do you know. Now all I can do is see what pans out over the next few hours. In the meantime, Credit Agricole, my bank, have been absolutely amateurish and pathetic. Despite my instructing them to make a reclamation on the J P Morgan bank account into which I transferred funds over two weeks ago on the instructions of a J P Morgan Vice President in London they have done absolutely nothing, complaining they can’t get in touch with the Luxembourg bank. Credit Agricole is not a competent, professional banking organisation on the evidence of my experience.

My predictions as to what will now transpire are as follows. I believe the stuff about the colleague resigning etc is false as the company’s address is fake and the company doesn’t exist. So what the scammer will do is get access to ‘his colleague’s’ sales information and ‘discover’ the funds I transferred. He will then offer to repay them.

That way if he does he makes his (fake) company look legitimate and gets himself off the hook. And with me then not pursuing him he’s able, if he’s so inclined, to continue his activities later on when the dust has settled, as I mentioned in a previous message that if I got my money back I had neither the time nor the inclination to take things any further.

If that does happen I, of course, will be delighted. If it doesn’t and even if I continue with my present course of action I’m resigned to not seeing my money again, but just doing what I can to mess him up will be enough for me.

Have you tried it? It’ll make you smile.

Three images I created in minutes on my first attempt.

Sadly, it’s about the mini excavator I ordered from China. Despite my best endeavours to avoid such a thing happening, it looks as though I’ve been scammed and I’ll not be seeing either the excavator or my money again. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks chasing the ‘supplier’, investigating their address and their bank account but without success.

I’ve alerted my bank, Credit Agricole, after contacting the bank of the party into which I transferred my money, J P Morgan in Luxembourg, who suggested that my bank commences a funds recovery procedure. I’m awaiting to hear what their findings are, but I doubt I’ll get my money back as these scammers don’t usually leave any loopholes that make that possible.

Two things mystify me. Firstly, how did a scammer manage to open up a J P Morgan international bank account? This is not like your High Street branch which you can go into with an electricity bill and a proof of ID and just open an account. It specialises in the wealth management of international clients. Secondly, how did a scammer manage to line up the excavator and the exact accessories I ordered on the factory floor and take a photograph?

I may find out the answer to the first question but I doubt I will to the second as the factory could be anywhere in China. I’ll report the matter to Aliexpress but I won’t get any support from them as the order was not placed strictly according to their system. However, the scammer must be removed from their system and prevented from scamming other clients, not that that will stop them from restarting under a different name.

I’ll be licking my wounds and having another go with delivery late this year or in the new year after I return from Australia, although this time placing the order rigidly according to the Aliexpress system so as to guarantee my money. I’ve been scammed before when I was in business and it’s a painful lesson to have to relearn 🙁

Our second heatwave. Temperatures have been around the 40 degrees mark with almost windless clear blue skies for several days. Yesterday it got up to 39 degrees inside my house and as I type this at around 5.30 am, although it’s 23 degrees outside (forecast 17) it’s still an almost unbearable 32 degrees inside. So I can’t sleep and my electric fans are just moving hot air around.

And there will be no respite for several more days to come. The forecast for today is 42 degrees, Wednesday 37 degrees, Thursday 38 degrees, Friday and Saturday 41 degrees, Sunday 40 degrees and then a slow fall to the mid 30s. It’s almost impossible to do anything, especially outside. I need to paint my shutters but it’s too hot for that and working indoors tiling my kitchen and utility room walls would be unbearable.

Even the insects are suffering. I have thick curtains on my living room doors which I’ve had to pull as the sun has moved round to keep as much heat out as possible but when I’ve been able to open my living room doors to get a bit of air circulating I’ve been getting swarms of insects flying in, presumably attracted by the relative shade.

Two days ago I had a couple of bees flying around the tap on my kitchen sink searching for water and I keep the bowl of water I put out for my doggie visitor topped up as it’s being constantly visited by all manner of flying insects. Large grasshoppers keep coming indoors including giant green ones seeking shade from the hot sun and one little black one which I picked up to throw back outside had the temerity to bite me, which I’ve never come across before.

It’s all a bit too much now and I’ll be glad when it ends, but it looks as though we’ll have to put up with it for at least another week before it subsides.

Back to say…

It’s not long after 8.00 am and there’s been a sudden change! Evidently a cold front has come in, the temperature has dropped and because of the high humidity, we’ve now got thick mist! But it doesn’t matter. The temperature relief is wonderful and I’ve got all my windows and doors wide open with electric fans pulling the cooler air through the house.

My indoor temperature has now dropped to 26 degrees, which is a relief, and it could fall further as it’s cooler than that outside. How long it will last though, is anyone’s guess 😕

A clash of cultures. Or bureaucracies?

My mini-excavator purchase is proceeding. It began with my making an initial down-payment of 30% of the quoted cif price of the machine and its accessories delivered to Marseilles after which the various items were put into manufacturing according to the details I specified in my order. Then I had to pay the balance, 70% of the cif price, after which they were packed and shipped to the port in China for export to France.

But it actually began long before that when I did many days of detailed research into what is involved in such a transaction and what demands would be made of me as the buyer. I’ve had some experience of such matters while I was running my own business. For example, I exported an industrial shredder worth over £30k at that time from the UK to Abu Dhabi and handled all of the export paperwork and the formalities for an export finance guarantee, transport and shipping myself.

But doing so from within a business framework is different to doing it as a private individual, which is what I now am since I sold my business and retired. Then I was running a company that was registered for company tax and VAT and now I’m not, so the first thing I had to do was find out whether I could import the machine from China into France as a private individual.

The French customs authorities were extremely helpful and confirmed that I could do so, and also without employing the services of an agent so long as I was capable of dealing with the customs import procedures myself. This was good news and a great relief as although the use of an agent facilitates the processes involved it also considerably inflates the cost, in the case of a machine like mine by the best part of 100% or even more depending on what services they carry out.

So only when I knew all of this and had established the bona fides of the supplier to the best of my abilities by carrying out my own searches on them did I go ahead and place my order. After that I just expected to hear that the machine had been transported from the factory and shipped and after a delay of 30-40 days, that it was ready for customs clearance at Marseilles.

But not so. While it was on its way from the factory I was asked by the supplier for my EORI number which they said was required by their forwarder before the machine could be loaded on board the freighter. This came out of the blue and was something completely new to me. The supplier said that I could easily obtain one at no cost by applying to French customs but that I needed to do it quickly as otherwise the machine would be stuck at the port in China.

So I set to the task. A bit more research revealed that there is an on line system in France, known as SOPRANO, into which I entered my details only to find there’s no provision within it for a private individual. It asked for my SIRET or SIREN which are the registration numbers for different types of French businesses and if, like me, you have neither it only gave the alternative of registering as an ‘entrepreneur individuel’, a person in business on your own account who does not have to be registered, much the same as for small businesses in the UK.

So although I am not in business and certainly have no intention of using my mini-excavator for business purposes as and when I can get my hands on it, this is how I made my application for an EORI number. And was promptly rejected by the system, which insisted that to get one I had to provide either a SIRET or SIREN in order to be approved. So time for some more research.

Luckily although far from perfect, my French is good enough to allow me to do this and quite quickly I established that not only as a private individual am I not entitled to have an EORI number, the regulations actually forbid me from having one*. Instead I found that the export paperwork for goods imported into France by private individuals does not carry an EORI but in its place has entered the code ‘OCCASIONNEL’, meaning ‘occasional’.

I could well understand that for, for example, personal or household goods of someone relocating from say China to France, but would it also be good for items like my mini-excavator I wondered? So time to call up French customs once more who were very helpful once again. Yes they confirmed, that is how it has to be done. So time to get back to my supplier in China with the news.

And that’s when the problems arose. The supplier, or more likely the supplier’s forwarding company, was adamant that whenever they ship goods, they always have to enter an EORI number. And so a dialogue began, backwards and fowards between us. I said that it had been specificfally confirmed to me by French customs that their forwarder is incorrect, the information they are using is wrong, this is not the case for private individuals and the code mentioned above is used instead.

But they would not have it. I have sent them copies of statements made on the French customs ‘gouv.fr’ web site together with specific links to the sections in question and although at the time of writing I’ve been told that the paperwork is being processed I still have not had it confirmed that my excavator is physically being loaded for shipment.

On Friday I asked for French customs to let me have confirmation in writing of the procedure for me to forward to China but as this will not be forthcoming until this coming Monday at the earliest, I am still on tenterhooks.

The question is, what will happen if the supplier’s forwarding company stands its ground, despite being in the wrong? The problem is that with a freighter standing by, time is of the essence and there isn’t much time left for a tit-for-tat dialogue going backwards and forwards between France and China.

Luckily there is an alternative that will break the impasse – namely using the EORI number of a close friend’s French registered company. I would rather not do this unless I’m forced to by circumstances because it will introduce further complications. If their company is registered for VAT, which I think it is, it will be exempt from paying VAT on arrival of the machine at Marseilles, which is what I want to do.

Instead they might have to account for and pay the VAT in their next company VAT return which is how I would have done it if I’d still been in business. This could make things rather messy and is something I’d like to avoid. Hopefully all will be revealed on Monday and the logjam which currently exists will be broken.

Incidentally, readers might like to know out of interest how such a rapid dialogue can be conducted between speakers of two disparate languages like English (or French) and Chinese. The answer is AI. I type a message in English and it’s immediately converted into Chinese at the other end. The supplier types a reply in Chinese and I get it in either English or French, it varies. The process is amazing, very impressive and based on my current experience, works well.

*Further research has revealed that the reason for this is that an EORI number in part contains the organisation’s SIRET or SIREN, which is why private individuals, and even ‘entrepreneurs individuels’ can’t have one, despite the SOPRANO web site suggesting otherwise.